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1. A Half Century of African Independence: Three Cycles of Hope and Disappointment
- University of Wisconsin Press
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3 1 A Half Century of African Independence Three Cycles of Hope and Disappointment Baseline for Independence The symbolic date of African independence is commonly acknowledged to be 6 March 1957, when the colonial Gold Coast became the sovereign state of Ghana. Some might choose 1956, when Morocco, Tunisia, and Sudan all emerged from colonial occupation. But these transitions lacked the continental resonance of Ghanaian independence. The commanding importance of Ghana lies in its having traced a path along which former British territories would soon follow, setting in turn a precedent that other European colonial powers could not escape, even if Portugal resisted militarily for nearly two decades.1 Above all, Ghanaian independence was decisive in creating a sense of the inevitability of imminent decolonization, which was not present even a year or two earlier. Still, the more customary baseline for marking the independence era is 1960, when no less than seventeen countries achieved sovereignty. Five turbulent decades have followed, producing an African political landscape in which there was strikingly little change in the set of state actors but a dramatic transformation in their institutional content and social environment . Outcomes well beyond the outer bounds of analytical imagination when Ghana celebrated its independence are legion. If one accepts as valid measure of state performance a stable democratic regime politically and sustained robust development economically, then none could forecast that two of the least promising territories in 1957, Botswana and Mauritius, would top the tables five decades hence. Conversely, at that base point Somalia was frequently celebrated as a rare African example of a genuine nation-state whose cultural coherence held promise for effective rule; yet since 1991—for nearly a third of the postcolonial era—the country has been a morass of civil strife pitting subclans and warlord factions against one another in an effectively stateless environment. In 1957, many Africans and observers perceived in the mass single party of anticolonial combat the potential for societal mobilization for rapid development once independence was won. Armed liberation movements combined progressive ideologies with apparent iron discipline, presumed applicable to the tasks of development. These illusions have an archaic ring today. Scope and Objectives: Seeing Africa Whole The object of this volume is to examine the political trajectories of the fiftythree African states over the course of the past half century. This period covers my academic career, which has been devoted to the study of African politics, as researcher, as teacher, as visiting professor in three African countries (Senegal, Uganda, and Congo-Kinshasa), as faculty dean in Congo, and as occasional policy consultant.2 I include the entire continent rather than restricting “Africa” to its sub-Saharan regions, which is a frequent analytical practice, and I have made this choice for several reasons. History argues for a continental perspective; deep cultural, economic, religious, and political links unite the Arab tier of states in the north to the lands to the south. As G. N. Sanderson has noted, the colonial partition that defined the contemporary territorial map operated in interactive competitive manner with the entirety of the continent as its frame.3 Ali Mazrui adds that “Africa is at once more than a country and less than one. . . . Africa is a concept, pregnant with the dreams of millions of people.”4 The two major recent collective works synthesizing African history from its earliest days, the Cambridge and UNESCO eight-volume histories of Africa, both aspire to seeing Africa whole. Official Africa claims standing as a constituted region of intercommunicating states with a commonality of goals; the pan-African dream is surprisingly robust in the face of its institutional shortcomings and disappointments. Not least important, the most popular sport in Africa, football (soccer), operates organizationally on an all-Africa basis. On a more personal note, my first engagement with Africa came in 1956 with the opportunity to observe a national congress of the Union générale des étudiants tunisiens in Tunis. Subsequently, a study year in Paris in 1956– 57 brought me into close connection with the Union générale des étudiants musulmans algériens. The exposure I gained through my association with the Mahgreb student movements to the two faces of anticolonial nationalist action throughout Africa left enduring memories of mass mobilization around the 4 part one Setting the Frame [3.85.211.2] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:32 GMT) political party led by the charismatic combattant suprême Habib Bourguiba in Tunisia, the fierce military discipline and moral determination...